Eric Grimm has a grim tale indeed over @ Dave Farber's IP list, describing in frightening, first-hand detail the over-reach that the USA PATRIOT Act currently enables. As Grimm points out, the law can serve as the ultimate blank check for the government -- due to "don't ask...

I'm a big Tori Amos fan. This week she released a new live concert DVD, entitled Welcome to Sunny Florida. It's fantastic. Tori has always been one of those "you really don't know till you've heard her live" artists. So, naturally, I want to get the audio onto my...

Michael Geist's latest column on copyright law in Canada contains yet another argument for the necessity of Creative Commons licenses: Toronto-area MP Sarmite Bulte is pushing for an interpretation of the law that embraces and codifies permission culture: Although [Bulte's committee] acknowledges that some work on the...

Why offer technology that empowers people to do cool things when you can hobble it to force them to buy cool things? So asks a report by Mako Analysis on SymbianOS phones, which are evidently too smart for their own good: New mobile devices based on a version of...

A group of influential Republican senators have introduced a bill to make permanent the civil liberties-corroding provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act that were sold to the public -- and to Congress -- as temporary measures. These provisions are among the most controversial in the Act, and for...

On a panel a few weeks ago, I asked the head lawyer for Apple's iTunes Music Store whether Apple would, if it could, drop the FairPlay DRM from tracks purchased at the Music Store. He said "no." I was puzzled, because I assumed that the DRM obligation...

This just in: the California Institute of Technology and Loyola Law School are presenting a mock trial this Friday, May 21st, to play out a scenario in which a student creates a distributed computing application to crack DRM systems, leading to the criminal prosecution of everyone involved...

The most remarkable testimony at last week's DMCRA hearings was that of former Congressman Allan Swift. Swift was testifying as a private citizen, as a "home recordist." Basically, he's been making "mix tapes" for 54 years: In that time, I have given friends many tapes, cassettes and now...

A trio of responses to the DMCRA hearing on Wednesday: Seth Finkelstein: It would great if everyone could just take a loyalty oath at the start and thus get beyond the endless querying about whether they believe in some sort of heretical radicalism. Something like: "I am not...

As of today, DMCA reform has a very real chance of passing the U.S. Congress. The biggest ray of hope for those of us who care about fair use came not from what happened at the hearing itself, but rather, at a lunch session that took place during a recess...